


The Boy Who Is

by PresquePommes



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, M/M, Non-Binary Hange Zoë, Slurs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-06
Updated: 2016-02-03
Packaged: 2018-02-24 07:11:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2572775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PresquePommes/pseuds/PresquePommes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So I see some Harry Potter universe pieces floating around, and I usually enjoy them, but I always think that there should be more to them. I like what there is, but I'm a malcontent. I want to see more in-depth lore and characterization. A richer world, not just an insertion of characters. </p><p>But, shit, complaining doesn't get you anywhere, so I wrote it myself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Some of the lore here got out of hand, by which I mean I made it up but am not going to tell you what because I'm hoping you stare at it all uncertainly trying to figure out what you just don't recall and what's invented.
> 
> If you hate this, the best way to get me not to update is to ignore me, honestly.
> 
> Edit: holy shit, the response to this has been overwhelming! I'm currently working on a second chapter, but I'm working a lot, so it might be a couple days yet until you see it. Hang in there!

He was only eight when he overheard his magic tutor say,

“Grisha, there are days I wonder if he’s not a _Squib_ , there’s nothing I can do,”

to his father in a hushed, harried-sounding voice, but he still understood what that meant.

His stomach didn’t drop, no- it seemed to disappear altogether, and his tongue seemed to slide back into his throat and choke him when he tried to speak.

He barely tasted the food he ate that night for dinner, and for the day following, he was lost in a fog.

The day after, however, he was not.

“Eren, why do you look so peevish?”

He changed in what seemed to be a single night from a sweet but spoilt child to a fiery-tempered and stubborn boy.

He would not hear that he _could not_ , only that he _had not yet_. If it were not for his family’s good standing, his tutor may have felt obliged to give up on him far sooner- as it was, no amount of sighing that hard work only went so far could dissuade the boy.

In the same year, he gained a sister and could not remember quite how. Much later, with a little help from a friend, it would occur to wonder if his father hadn’t used a memory charm to clear his mind of the event, and to wonder why.

Mikasa clung to him with a persistence he found comforting and irritating in turns, depending on the unpredictable cant of his mood- and more, depending on the circumstances, particularly those in which his competitive nature came into play.

She was better than him at everything, without exception. She seemed to breathe magic while he bled it.

It was difficult not to resent her, but easy to love her resentfully as a sibling might feel inclined to do.

It was easy to make her his sister.

When Eren turned ten, everything changed.

“I don’t understand.”

His father was an expert on magical ailments- the best in Britain, bar none. He’d brought his family from Germany so many years ago for precisely that reason.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with her, Eren,” his father told him carefully, gripping him by the shoulders to keep him from thrashing. “I’m sorry.”

As the words sunk in, his first reaction was to feel terribly, terribly betrayed.

This was the moment he discovered that he could not put faith in magic to solve everything, and the year he discovered loss.

Grisha grew distant, for a short time not a father at all, just another man coping with a great loss in his own way, and without his mother’s scolding voice and fond smile to stop and soothe him, Eren only grew wilder.

***

When he turned eleven, his father took him to the shop of the wandmaker Johann Rübezahl, and while he could only summon the vaguest memory of a tall man with greying hair when he thought of him later, his impression of the shop was immediate and lasting.

It smelled of wood shavings and linseed oil and tar, and beneath that, of something he would later identify as the smell of magic.

This was something he would learn very quickly not to mention, for no one else seemed to understand what he was referring to when he did, and those who didn’t mock him for it took to watching him cautiously from the corners of their eyes.

The smell of magic had a certain headiness, a pervasive indescribability that he could liken to breathing in the old, still air of a basement stairwell or a wine cellar, but could not apply words of his own to.

He found it calming, and took each wand handed to him with numb and impassive fingers, feeling as little for it as it seemed to feel for him, until the wandmaker pulled his father aside to tell him something he simply did not want to hear.

Unattended, Eren looked over the shelves as he wandered the scuffed floor further and further into the depths of a shop that had looked much smaller from the outside, and somewhere far enough within that his father’s desperate protests had dulled to a muted hum, he felt compelled to look beneath a squat dresser that had been shoved against a wall to his left.

Under it, he found five boxes.

Unlike the others in the shop, the ones lining the walls from floor to ceiling with a rainbow of colours, these boxes were unmarked- old, creased, dusty and discoloured things with sagging lids and no crest or brand to speak of.

He would only remember one of them.

The wand within it was made of a white, fine-grained wood, but its smoothly carved grip had yellowed in the grooves. His fingers fit perfectly into them.

He did not hear his father’s hushed voice change from argument to alarm, and he only barely heard his father calling his name in a tone of increasing panic. The moment he realized he was there at all was when the floor he had been sitting cross-legged on shuddered with quickening steps, and he looked up to find his father bearing down on him with a mixed expression of residual anxiety, exhausted relief, and budding irritation.

“ _Eren_ ,” he was scolded, “put that down immediately-”

The lithe weight of the wand felt so comfortable and warm in his palm and fingers that he forgot he was holding it, and the attempt he made to jerk back from his father’s reaching hand sent his wrist flicking its tip towards him.

He didn’t see his father or the wandmaker tense.

He was too busy marveling at the languid stream of white smoke that shot from its tip, and then, at the way his father’s suit began to sprout small leaves where the smoke had rolled across the fabric.

The wandmaker Rübezahl looked more bemused than worried by the discovery.  He looked first at Eren’s father’s flowering suit jacket, and then at Eren himself, and for long enough that he was still looking when Eren remembered he was there and thought to look back. His expression was thoughtful.

“You have a very special boy, _Herr Jäger_ ,” he said softly, gently taking the wand from Eren’s hand when the boy scrambled belatedly to his feet. “Thirty-six centimetres. Flexible, but brittle if pushed too far.”

Eren watched him turn the wand over and wondered, distantly, why he seemed to be looking through rather than at it.

“Hazel- a very emotional wood. Sensitive. This is a wand that will lash out at others when its master feels he cannot. A very loyal wood, hazel.” He turned and began to pace towards the front of the shop.

Eren hurried past his father, absentmindedly trampling the leaves the man was shedding on the floor in his efforts to clear his lapel of its unexpected foliage.

His eyes were trained only on the wandmaker’s back. The loss of the wand’s weight in his hand made him strangely anxious.

“When I finished my apprenticeship under the wandmeister _Musäus_ , I opened a shop of my own in the north of Wales,” the wandmaker murmured, glancing back at him once before turning to open a heavy drawer by the window. “It was there I was approached by a woman. This woman, taller and wider than the door to my little shop, as dark in the skin and eyes as Estonian wand pitch, and more beautiful to me than _eine Tochter_ of Delacour- she told me she had a very special horse.”

The wandmaker looked over his shoulder again, and Eren met his eyes, puzzled. This time, Rübezahl did not look away.

“Her horse was a Kelpie the size of an Abraxan,” he told Eren, the skin around his eyes crinkling with a smile his mouth barely showed. “She wanted me to make a wand from a hair of his mane.” He placed the wand he was holding in a slim, satin-lined box, and turned, smiling down at a boy who was only half-following what was being said to him. “It is the only wand I have ever made because I was asked to make it- but it would not answer the one who had asked,” he laughed. “Maybe it was me, maybe it was my selfishness- the wand she had broken was made from black ash, a wand so stubborn it would splinter to pieces before it thought to bend, but in the madness of my infatuation, I saw the white flesh of a hazel tree growing in my neighbour’s yard and thought only that it would look beautiful in her dark fingers.”

Eren just stared at him as he placed the box in his hands, searching his rheumy eyes for a meaning that nagged, but not did reveal itself to his young mind.

The wandmaker kneeled in front of him, looking up now, instead of down.

“This is a capricious wand, made by a great fool and a poor thief for the love of a woman who could not forgive thieves and did not tolerate foolishness,” he smiled. “A very unusual wand,” he said meaningfully, “for a very unusual boy.” The pause that followed was pensive. “The great family Ollivander will tell you that the hair of a Kelpie makes for a wand that is less than it could be, and to that, I say: many wizards are far less than they could be, and no wand core in the world will save a wizard from his own mediocrity.”

He placed his hands over the box Eren was cradling in his arms.

“You, I feel,” he whispered, “will never be less.”

“That’s, um,” Eren’s father interrupted uneasily, “that’s very nice of you to say, _Herr_ _Rübezahl_. So this is the right wand for my son?”  His hand fell on Eren’s shoulder in what seemed intended to be a comforting gesture, but Eren could not help but crush the box against his chest reflexively.

“Your son is the right wizard for this wand, which is something I did not think I would live to see,” the wandmaker corrected mildly as he stood.

“Yes, of course,” his father said impatiently. “May I assume the usual cost?”

Eren admired the dark wood of the box for a moment before cracking it open to peek inside.

“I am already paid,” the wandmaker said warmly.

The white of the wand seemed luminous against the dark satin within.

“I don’t understand.”

Eren poked a finger in to touch it, unsure if he was allowed to take it out again.

“Many years ago, I met a travelling wandmeister who told me he had once given a boy a wand for free,” Rübezahl was saying. Eren only half-listened, but the story would stick in his ears nonetheless. “I asked why he would do such a thing, and he said it was because the match had surprised him in a time when he thought nothing could surprise him anymore- because it made him remember the mysteries of a wand’s magic. I told him he was crazy.”

“ _Herr_ _Rübezahl_ -”

“Shh, shh,” the wandmaker tutted. “I am old, and we are countrymen in land of strangers, and so you must put up with me until I am done,” he said sternly.

Very dimly, Eren registered his father shifting uncomfortably behind him. He was memorizing the lines of the wand in the box with his fingertips as surreptitiously as he could.

“Larch wood and dragon heartstring,” the wandmaker started again. “He said it was a wand with a rigid nature, but that it could be deceptively flexible when held correctly.” He hummed in the way only the old and those affecting their wisdom did. “He told me he had been certain to his very heart that the boy’s wand would be cedar, that even so young, he had…” He paused, gesturing lightly for a moment with his fingers. Eren could see them moving in the periphery of his vision. “ _Der Scharfsinn,_ though maybe _der_ _Scharfblick_ would be closer. The boy had discernment in his eyes, shrewdness- he was no one’s fool, the very ideal for a cedar wand, but the wand that chose him was larch- and that was the moment, my friend told me, that he realized he was not seeing everything he thought he was seeing. Any wandmeister will tell you that a larch wand brings out the unexpected in the one it has chosen, perfect for the person of hidden talents- perfect for the one whose potential is buried so deeply that it is a mystery even to the self. He told himself then that he would give the boy the wand for nothing. He had just undone the wand’s charm of protection when he turned around and found the boy was gone! Gone, already running out a door that would have bounced him back into the shop like a Puffskein against a Beater’s bat just seconds before,” he laughed. “He said it bothered him, the thought of the boy thinking he was a thief for taking a wand he was about to be given- he said he could tell it would trouble him.”

“I- I don’t understand,” Eren’s father said slowly.

Eren looked up in time to meet the wandmaker’s fond gaze. “I know,” he said, “and you may never. Until this moment, I did not either.” Eren looked back fearlessly, oddly comforted by the weight of the wand box in his arms and the smell of magic in the air. “He said I would see for myself, one day, and I did not believe him. Now I do.”

Eren didn’t have to look to know his father was frowning. “Nevertheless, we are not leaving without paying you,” he said firmly, and Eren felt a cold thrill of apprehension when he squeezed his shoulder. “If you won’t let me pay you, I can’t, in good conscience, let my son take this wand. Eren, give that to me-”

He looked up at his father desperately, crushing the box close to a chest that seemed to be labouring more and more with each breath.

“ _Herr Jäger,_ ” Rübezahl barked, his wispy voice rising to a growl in his throat. “Hazel is a loyal wood- it has chosen your son, and as long as this hair lives within it, it will not choose another. Now, I know your head is empty of anything you think you do not need to know,” he scolded, tapping Eren’s father’s forehead with a bony fingertip, “but I will teach you, so listen: a Kelpie is a creature of the water, and the magic of a Kelpie’s hair means the hair will never dry- in a wand, this means the water of the lake begins to seep in the wood of the wand- where another wand grows brittle with age, the wand that holds a Kelpie’s hair never will. This, _Herr Jäger_ , is why it was once so popular a core, though our friends in London have forgotten.”

His father’s hand was almost painfully tight on his shoulder, but the man himself said nothing.

“Because the child no longer inherits the wand of the parent, we have come to think it is _logische_ , that it is natural for the wand to grow brittle with the master,” the wandmaker continued. “And maybe there is truth to that- a wand abandoned by death is a sadder thing than you know.” Eren studied the serious look in his eyes with a strange feeling. He thought, for a moment, of how he would feel if his father were to break the wand that had warmed his hand and become a part of him, and his heart ached. He wondered then if the wand would ache for him, too, if he was broken.

“They say a grieving hazel wand can be made new by a different core, but one as saturated by the water of the Kelpie’s hair as this would never be the same,” the wandmaker murmured. “It would be strange, filled with the ghost of its first allegiance, obedient and haunted by grief in unpredictable turns.” The feeling of his hand coming to rest in Eren’s hair was strange but soothing, and though he was eleven and thought himself much too old to be treated like a child, he did not protest. “It would better to destroy a widowed wand such as this than force it to serve another. I cannot take your son’s wand from him,” he said clearly, heavy hand forcing Eren to duck his head to avoid getting hair in his eyes. “It is not mine to take or be paid for.”

“But _Herr_ -”

“If you refuse to take what is yours,” Rübezahl threatened, “I will be forced to consider it as something you have forgotten, and I will charm it as my brother’s precocious child charmed my glasses- to never be lost again.”

His stare was intense and unyielding. “You will put it in a box to send to back to me in the evening and find it under your son’s pillow in the morning. It will come to him every single time, because, _Herr Jäger_ ,” he said meaningfully, “it is his to keep.”

In the end, an enchantment of such persistence was not needed.

Eren still slept with the wand box beside his pillow for nearly a year afterwards.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eren does some growing up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very little of this story is dedicated to Eren being a teenager at Hogwarts, fair warning. Not super interested in that.

School was how he was warned it would be.

He and his sister’s invitations to the small German school their father had attended came first, as expected, and their invitations to Hogwarts came shortly after, as hoped. Eren knew his father was bitter that he had opted to attend the prestigious British school instead of his father’s- and was followed by Mikasa in doing so, who would not so much as consider the idea of a separation- but even his bitter muttering about the great power of good press couldn’t ruin the excitement of it all for him.

Their departure from the station and entry onto the Hogwarts Express was extraordinary only in how tremendously ordinary it was. His sister sat in his compartment with him, which he had expected.

He could not help feeling slightly restless.

Ten odd minutes into the train ride, a bright-eyed young man asked to sit in his compartment.

He introduced himself first in a mumble, and second in a quiet voice as one Armin Arlert, seeming uncertain he belonged and slightly concerned that raising his voice would alert someone to his presence and cause him to be expelled from the train.

By the time the castle rolled into view, it seemed certain to Eren that Armin was destined for Ravenclaw. Armin questioned this assertion, dithering nervously, but Eren insisted.

 He was right.

Armin, being an Arlert as he was, was the sixth student called, and the fabled Sorting Hat had barely touched his blond head before proclaiming him a Ravenclaw for all the world to hear- or, at the very least, those present in the Great Hall at the time.

Mikasa, as she had never taken her adoptive family’s name, was an Ackerman, and had been called only two students before him. She seemed to have a somewhat less straightforward relationship with the Hat- she had sat on the stool with it atop her head for several minutes, expression growing darker and darker, until it had proclaimed her the first new Ravenclaw of the year to Armin’s soon-to-be second.

While it was difficult for Eren to tell if this development pleased or displeased her, she stared meaningfully at him in passing as she proceeded to her House’s table and he supposed she meant something by it.

As the ceremony dragged on, he grew more and more impatient to be done with it- it seemed to him that having a name so far along in the alphabet was more of a chore than he’d realized.

When his name was finally called- a brisk and very slightly wrongly pronounced, “Eren Jaeger?” which he knew was to be expected of English speakers by that point- he nearly ran to the front, provoking a ripple of laughter he was belatedly embarrassed by but still simply too eager to be done with the thing to mind terribly.

 _“Hmm,”_ a small voice that was more in his head than his ears hummed. _“So you’re the one that girl was making such a fuss about, are you? She was quite insistent I sort you both into the same House, you know.”_

It took him a split-second to realize what the Hat was talking about, but once he did, he cringed.

“Oh no,” he groaned, and whispered, “anywhere else, please, anywhere else.”

The Hat laughed creakily. _“You’re a hardy sort, difficult to discourage, but hard work can’t substitute for wits if you’ve got none. You’ve got a brave heart in you, so you’d make a fine Gryffindor, but I think it’ll have to be-”_

“Hufflepuff!” it boomed, and Eren sagged with relief.

He’d hoped for Gryffindor, truthfully, as it was known to be the House where heroes were made, but he was so amply pleased by the discovery that he would finally have some space away from his sibling that he couldn’t bring himself to be too bothered by it.

He staggered to the Hufflepuff table, gamely ignoring the incensed stare Mikasa was levelling at his back.

He sat down beside a girl who seemed infinitely more interested in the feast component of the Start-of-Term Feast than anything else. She introduced herself through a mouthful of roast potatoes as Sasha Braus, which he had to have her repeat once she’d swallowed on account of her broad lowlands accent.

Shortly after, a boy with close-cropped hair and the sort of easy smile typical to children who are accustomed to being everyone’s friend on at least a casual basis sat to his left and introduced himself in a slightly unusual accent as Conrad Springer.

“Call me Connie,” he invited, and then added, “no, please, call me Connie,” with a desperation that suggested his mother was in the habit of calling him Conrad.

Connie and Sasha, as it turned out, had met on the train, and both of them were delighted to learn that he, like them, was not a British citizen by birth.

“My mam’s from Yorkshire, but my dad’s from a bit north of St. John’s- that’s Canada, Sasha, I told you on the train, pudding goes in your mouth, not your ears, girl- so I grew up in- what? Yeah, I know you know where pudding goes, it was a joke, no one doubts you know how to eat, you can trust me on that- anyway, I grew up in Newfoundland, moved to Essex when I was ten for mam’s research, but we’re living over in Kent these days-”

“My folks, we come from the Netherlands to begin with, though I guess I’m from Selkirkshire myself, ‘less the family’s gone and moved while I was on my way to school- you’re German, yeah? I’ve heard good things about the food there, always wanted to visit Germany-”

Eren’s family was originally from Wadern, and he’d lived close to Schwarzwälder Hochwald for most of his early life before coming to England. When they asked where he lived now, he smiled and told them,

“Hogwarts.”

They laughed, but he had only been half-joking.

***

His difficulties with magic became apparent almost immediately.

By the end of the first week, he’d had an altercation with a classmate.

By the end of the second month, his teachers were beginning to see an unfortunate pattern.

The issue came to a head when another student- a Gryffindor, to his surprise, for he’d always assumed them to be fair and noble people as a rule- had accused him of being a Squib, and in a fit of temper he and his sensitive wand had loosed an enormous hoard of spiders in the Charms classroom, which subsequently had to be closed due to the panic that broke out amongst the students.

He’d only been intending to hex the boy.

“ _Self-control_ , Mister Jaeger,” the Headmistress told him, “that is what you lack. Now, I have faith that you mean well- you don’t seem to look for trouble,” she murmured drily, looking over her glasses at him, “but you do appear to invite it, and that is proving quite the problem.”

Quidditch training would wear him out, she said. He needed something to take the edge off of his aggression before they resorted to putting him at the mercy of the gamekeeper, she said.

He’d never flown before, on account of his mother’s fretting and later, his father’s inattention, and he was not a natural at it.

He did, however, improve in leaps and bounds through effort alone.

***

By the beginning of second year, he was allowed to join his House team, and by the end of it, he was the most feared Beater in the school, the Quidditch player with the most fouls in any House, and had developed a reputation for being so stubborn that he could not be knocked off of his broom, opting instead to fly upside down with his legs clenched around the broom handle and his face rapidly going purple.

Opposing team members could often be heard speculating over whether or not he was really a Hufflepuff, after all, and if there had not been some mistake. They did not ask this to his face, however, because Eren had quickly come to think of the Hufflepuff House as a sort of home and family, and an unfortunate side effect of his experience with Quidditch was that it had taught him that simply knocking someone down instead of hexing them incurred a much less dire reprimand.

***

By year three, Sasha was Hufflepuff’s Seeker, which was by all accounts a surprise- she’d expressed a fondness of horseback riding to Eren in the year previous, and was noticed to sit quite naturally upon a broomstick, but had never shown any interest in Quidditch.

Their team captain was noted to remark with no small amount of admiration that once she caught a glimpse of the Snitch, she seemed to have eyes for nothing else. Eren agreed, though something about her frenzied attitude on the field nagged at him.

Later, as the inhabitants of their common room dwindled, Connie would lean in to whisper,

“I told her to think of it as one of those chocolates you get at Christmas- you know, the ones all wrapped in foil and plastic, it looks like one if you think of the wings like those, uh, the twisty bits- but now she says I have to give her one for every one she catches, you know-”

Eren would be unable to explain his sudden bout of laughter to his teammates during their next practice, and would later be known as the Beater with the disconcerting habit of chuckling during tense plays, something that would come to be generally understood by uneasy opponents as an ingenious tactic, though one none of them had expected to see from the usually straightforward and earnest Hufflepuff team.

The impact of this was somehow not lessened by the fact that the rest of the team only tended to shrug and excuse it as one of Eren’s many idiosyncrasies when questioned on the subject, though that may have had something to do with Connie’s great love of starting daunting rumours about his friend.

***

Mikasa, as it turned out, had also joined her House’s Quidditch team after discovering that Eren had been forced to join his, securing the place of Ravenclaw’s Seeker, but it was not until fourth year that the Hufflepuff team considered itself as having a decent enough shot at the House Cup to consider trading tactics with a team that boasted wit as its strongest point- and the increasingly renowned Armin Arlert, boy genius, as its unofficial tactician.

“Just hit the Bludgers to me,” Eren told them when they continued to draw a blank, shrugging. “Hit them at me.”

When his teammates questioned both the point and the wisdom of this tactic, he only smiled mysteriously and said,

“Trust me.”

It worked.

The first time Eren was knocked off of his broom would also mark the first time his team won a match against Ravenclaw with Mikasa as their Seeker, and given that it seemed to be a direct result of her abandoning her pursuit of the Snitch to dart to his rescue, reactions were thoroughly mixed.

The unpopularity of this development led the Hufflepuff team captain to make the executive decision of changing Eren from Beater to Keeper, a move which would inspire such cautionary rhymes and ditties as

_Keeper kept the Quaffle out_  
_So I caught in him in the knee_  
_Seeker didn’t catch the Snitch_  
_But she sure caught up to me_

and

_Badger’s Beater bit a Bludger at me_  
_Beat that Bludger back_  
_Bludger bit the Quaffle Keeper_  
_Now my eyes are blue and black_

both of which went on to become timeless reminders of the general rudeness of interfering with the opposing team’s Keeper- and the very real possibility of being sent sprawling before the referee could call your foul.

***

Year four would also mark the second time Eren’s temper got the better of him in a way that would affect the rest of his years at school.

He was lingering in the hallway with his sister- with whom his relationship had vastly improved upon separation, as is often the case with siblings- and Armin after dinner when an apparently disgruntled sixth year student from the Slytherin House Quidditch team told Armin he’d “been slighted” by being born not only a boy, but a Muggle-born wizard.

Much later, Eren would suddenly wonder if the boy hadn’t been giving Armin a very roundabout and backhanded compliment, as his tone had not come across in any sort of mocking way, but in the moment he thought nothing of the sort.

Instead, he briefly contemplated hexing the boy, considered his dubious aptitude with magic, and simply opted to break his jaw instead.

***

“Mister Jaeger,” the Headmistress sighed, “while I appreciate your… discretion in not using magic to settle this matter, I believe you know what this means, don’t you?”

He did.

By the beginning of year five, Eren Jaeger, sixteen, was responsible for assisting with the care of all creatures both magical and non-magical housed within the Hogwarts building and adjacent grounds, including, but not limited to: the resident inhabitants of the Owlery, the Care of Magical Creatures’ professor’s litter of Crups, the Potions Master’s stock of Flobberworms, and the current caretaker’s newest litter of half-Kneazle kittens.

The discovery of Eren’s ability to see Thestrals came as a dark surprise to the faculty when he asked the gamekeeper,

“Did you need help with those, too?”

It was a question that led to the uncomfortable revelation of Eren’s exposure to his mother’s death, and subsequently an overall gentling of attitudes towards him, much to the displeasure of his enemies.

***

Eren’s second semester of year five would mark a turning point in his high school career.

He’d discovered that he quite liked caring for animals, and the practice gentled him considerably.

The gentling, of course, left his classmates free to notice that he had grown from an angry-eyed and wild-haired eleven year old to a promisingly tall and rather athletic sixteen year old whose characteristically serious gaze was suddenly more intriguing than frightening to a fellow adolescent.

His relationship to his peers changed rapidly.

He’d never really considered girls or boys or anything otherwise- he was prone to single-mindedness and a late bloomer as a result.

The second half of his fifth year was highly experimental.

He learned by summer break not to mention anything about it to his sister.

***

Year six found him in a hallway after hours, smiling at concerned-looking Slytherin prefect.

It also found him holed up in the prefect’s bathroom with the very same prefect, being shushed as passing footsteps lingered by the door.

“Oh god,” the boy whispered, to which Eren responded by kissing him into silence.

When the footsteps started up again, they were both too engrossed in each other to notice.

***

“An Auror?” Armin asked him, looking aghast.

Eren looked back, slightly annoyed at his disbelief. “Yeah, so?”

“Eren, your grades- your magic-”

Eren had already stopped listening.

He still did not believe that he could not- only that he had not already.

***

The On-Staff Coordinator Of Graduating Students, or OSCAGS, also affectionately- and inescapably- known as Professor O’Scags, thanks to the gentleman in question’s birth into a healthy Irish background under the auspicious name of Bartleworth O’Phineas, was a kindly man with more angles than curves and dark hair that seemed intent on growing skywards.

The On- part of On-Staff, Armin had told him, was an important distinction- outside consultations and placement coordinators were available to year seven students for a fee, but the school’s OSCAGS was the only free and universally accessible coordinator around.

As a result, Professor O’Scags- or Mister O’Phineas, as he claimed to preferred, despite reacting more quickly to calls of the former than the latter- was, as a rule, a very busy man.

It was for this reason that it came as a surprise to Eren to find he had been summoned to the school’s coordination office despite having no recollection- and indeed, no intention- of making such an appointment.

The reason for his summoning, he learned, was not as pleasant as he’d hoped.

“Mister Jaeger? Please sit,” O’Phineas greeted, flicking a wand nearly as sallow and tired-looking wand as himself towards the chair in the corner and causing it scuttle eagerly to the opposite side of his desk.

Eren sat, a strange foreboding already blooming in his chest.

“I understand you intend to become an Auror?”

O’Phineas spoke very kindly as he explained with some regret that Eren’s grades would not qualify him for Auror’s training.

The man was so unfortunately kind and obviously pained by the task of disappointing him that Eren couldn’t find it in himself to be belligerent, and for the first time, he was forced to consider that maybe, just maybe, hard work really wasn’t enough, after all.

Auror had sounded _big_. Auror had sounded _exciting_.

He’d never even thought about another career path.

“What am I gonna do?” he asked, feeling just as lost and empty as he had when he’d first overheard his magic tutor saying almost the same thing as he was hearing now.

O’Phineas smiled gently at him.

“Your professors tell me you have quite the affinity for taking care of animals.”

***

Eren Jäger, who’d begun to answer to the slightly inaccurate surname _Jaeger_ many years before, began working for the supplier to Coddlemuir’s Kneazle Needs Emprorium when he graduated, after being quite aggressively sniffed and laid upon by a variety of the creatures, which he was later informed constituted a very successful interview indeed.

He was eighteen when he started.

He was twenty-two when the owl came.

He initially handed the letter over to Candice Coddlemuir, the particular Coddlemuir he happened to work under,  without so much as looking at the envelope- he did not receive letters.

He had a cellphone, courtesy of his Muggle-born friend Armin, and had never really gotten around to getting an owl of his own, which seemed to work in his favour, as he did, in fact, spend his days amongst a variety of what were essentially very large, very intelligent cats.

Firthly, the Coddlemuir family’s owl, was a large, bedraggled-looking thing that knew to leave the Kneazles well enough alone, so when the letter was dropped in front of him, he assumed it was in order to avoid getting closer to them than entirely necessary.

When the letter was handed back to him, he was quite perplexed.

“It’s for you,” she told him, not without some exasperation.

He read it.

He reread it.

“What is it, dear?” Candice asked him, smiling a little strangely at his dumbfounded expression.

“They’re giving summer classes at Hogwarts in Advanced Defense,” he murmured, awestruck. “I’ve been recommended to assist.”

“Who is, dear?” she asked from the next room, nearly drowned out by demanding meows and clearly already having lost interest in the subject. Eren barely noticed.

“The Ministry,” he breathed.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Never what they expect you to be, are you?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, I'll preface by saying I make no apologies for interesting racial and ethnic headcanons, but if I ever execute something incorrectly or problematically, please inform me, because I want to know.
> 
> Also, adding a slur tag for posterity.

He’d never had Hanji Zoë as a professor, but he’d heard about them.

Few Hogwarts students had not.

Zoë was not only notable for having a rather unusual relationship with gender, but for having a reputation for eccentricity exceeding that of all other faculty members, even the somewhat infamous Potions Master, which gave many pause when they considered what it was that Zoë taught.

Officially, the course was called Muggling Magic, but even those who had never taken it knew that the good professor insisted on calling it Technomagicology.

It was a multi-faceted course on the possibilities of enchanting machines and the pragmatism of enchanting the magical to look mundane, and there were rumours it hadn’t even existed before they’d joined the faculty.

But then again, there were a lot of rumours about Hogwarts’ own and only genderless professor.

Eren hadn’t taken the course for a number of reasons.

It could be said that amongst them was the desire to avoid making a fool of himself by showing off his lackluster magic, as well as the need to distance himself from anything pertaining to Muggles, lest people get ideas.

Mostly, it was just that he wasn’t terribly interested.

Armin had taken the course, and had positively raved about it. Eren consider that almost as good as having taken it himself.

Nothing short of previous exposure, however, could have prepared him for Professor Zoë.

He was generally quite attuned to the space around him- he had a sort of visceral awareness of his own body and senses that made him difficult to sneak up on.

So when someone suddenly uttered a triumphant,

“Aha!”

from somewhere in the immediate vicinity of his left elbow, and when he whipped his head around to find that someone leaning in to stare at him through thick-lensed glasses, he was understandably quite startled.

They proved remarkably nimble for someone who looked, at a glance, like they were possessing of a wiry, rather unathletic frame beneath their robes, but he supposed that could just as well attributed to his own relative indolence since graduating.

In any case, he was glad his elbow did not connect.

They spoke as though the action had never happened.

“Eren Jäger, correct?”

He blinked, momentarily thrown off. “You said my name right.”

They blinked right back at him, as though he’d said something equally perplexing. “Yes,” they confirmed, and then continued. “Did you get lost? It’s been a few years since you’ve graduated, I know, and sometimes the halls like to rearrange themselves-”

He hadn’t been lost, except, perhaps, in thought.

He’d been marvelling both at how little the castle had changed and how much he had since he’d left it.

It had been a bittersweet sort of wondering.

“You’re Professor Zoë,” he said, and it wasn’t really a question. He’d never really paid attention to the faces of the teachers who sat with the Headmistress during meals, but he’d heard enough about them to connect the long, unkempt hair and ponderously heavy glasses to the name.

It was odd, he thought, how their hair made them less feminine-looking instead of more, which was what he’d always imagined.

It seemed to bring out all of the angles in their face.

Something occurred to him quite suddenly.

He interrupted them before they even had a chance to speak.

“If I can’t call you a witch or a wizard,” he mused aloud, “what do I call you?”

They looked slightly bemused by his abruptness.

“A magic user,” they started confidently, and then continued in a manner that suggested they suspected he might be inclined to argue. “You see, ‘witch’ and ‘wizard’ are not only terms existing in a gendered binary, but a _human_ gender binary, at that- the existing magical community is intensely exclusionary in that it has an unforgivably large bias towards magical humans,” they explained, “for example, a Veela is both sentient and magical, but only a half-Veela is permitted the use of a wand- the same applies to any being without human lineage, regardless of their ability to practice magic with or without wand. I’m sure you’re aware that centaurs and merfolk abstained from the classification of Being status in protest of the existing strata- similarly, I’ve decided on identifying personally as a user of magic in protest of the incredibly exclusionary language in current use within the-”

They paused, apparently without reason, and stared at him.

“You’re actually listening to me,” Zoë accused.

He was suddenly very confused. “Um, was I not to supposed to?” he asked, and when they continued to stare at him, began to talk rather nervously. “I just- I’ve never really thought about that and I thought it was interesting, and-”

“I like you,” they announced with a sudden smile, throwing an arm around his shoulders companionably.

It was a jarring transition from their earlier intensity.

“You’ve got good reflexes, you’re patient, and you’re receptive to things most members of our community find unusual- Bartleworth was right to recommend you, you know, you-” They gestured silently for a moment, patting his shoulder absentmindedly. “You’ll make an excellent addition, Eren- can I call you Eren? Call me Hanji, just Hanji, please, you’re not a student anymore- but, yes, he won’t have any reason to complain about you, no matter how much he wants to, you’ll do excellently- now, what were we talking about? Ah, yes, the problems surrounding the exclusionary language and attitude in the modern magical community, that’s right-”

***

Hanji was still talking when he made the acquaintance of the man he was to be assisting.

He had no idea how long it had been since they’d started.

He had tried, and was still trying gamely, to keep up with their rapid speech and the increasingly complex subject matter, but the more attentive he seemed to be, the faster they spoke and the more wildly they gesticulated in their excitement at having what appeared to be a willingly captive audience.

He finally understood the rumours.

They were not especially strange or particularly mad, he found, just partial to the controversial- and absolutely indefatigable on the subject.

He didn’t feel the man come up behind his chair, but at that point, he had no idea if that had to do with his mental exhaustion or the man in question’s stealthy movements.

He hardly startled when the he spoke.

“Oi. Is this one your assistant, or mine?”

Hanji’s face lit up like the sun was setting behind it. “Levi!” they exclaimed, “I didn’t hear you come in- mind you, I never do, but-”

Eren’s father was a doctor, and he knew the look of bone-deep fatigue intimately- this man looked like his father on one of his worst nights.

This man looked like he hadn’t slept in days.

Beneath their heavy hoods and over their dark circles, however, his eyes were steady and piercing.

There was something about them, something about his penetrating gaze and angular features that nagged familiarly at the surface of Eren’s memories.

It took him a moment to remember the bony faces and pale, watchful eyes of Thestrals stabled nearby, but the fascination the connection created in him was immediate.

 “I did tell you I would take care of him while you slept,” Hanji burbled in a way he distantly recognized as sounding too cheerful to carry the scolding inflection it was probably meant to. “You never listen to anything I say- mind you, you’ve always been like that, I should probably know better by now, shouldn’t I? Even before you became an Auror, you never slept enough-”

“You,” the Auror started, by all appearances ignoring Hanji completely, “have you worked for or with the Ministry of Magic in any capacity before?”

He spoke with an unusual mixture of boredom and extreme crispness, like he was reciting from a script, and the only words he seemed to inflect meaningfully were “ _in any capacity_ ,” which he bit out like a piece of particularly dry and tough meat.

“-you’ve been through his records, Levi, you know he hasn’t,” Hanji was already protesting by the time Eren had gathered his sluggish thoughts.

For the first time since entering, the Auror Hanji insisted on referring to so unceremoniously stopped looking blankly exhausted for long enough to muster some visible emotion.

It was annoyance.

“Hanji, you’ve worked with me off-record at least a dozen times,” he snapped, running a weary hand through hair that looked as though it had been windswept and then hastily smoothed. “You know that the Department will overlook things if there’s enough paperwork and no press involved- the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office never would’ve granted you special exemption if we’d had your contributions to Investigations on file.” His eyes flickered back to Eren’s face impatiently. “Have you or haven’t you worked with the Ministry?” he demanded.

“I-”

“Yes or no.”

“No,” Eren answered, with a belated, “sir.”

 He grunted inscrutably and whisked a rather thick sheaf of parchment out from under his jacket, all of which bore the imposing letterhead of the Ministry of Magic and seemed to be covered almost entirely in small, fastidiously neat print.

 “Read and sign this,” he instructed, thrusting it forward inelegantly. He paused for a moment, apparently to scrutinize Eren’s face. “Actually, just sign it. In short, the contents are as follows: while employed by the Ministry of Magic, you are expected to abide by both the letter and the connotative meaning of the law- any failure to do so will result in immediate removal from your post. If extenuating circumstances cannot be established within twenty-four hours of the incident, you will be disqualified from all future employment under the Ministry of Magic and subject to legal reprisal proportionate to the severity of your crime. As per regulation, you will be required to surrender your wand should you be found guilty of any offence of a greater severity than level one _‘Mischief’_. Further punishment, should it be considered necessary, will be entrusted to the judgement of the Ministry official responsible for the discovery of your offence. In the event of a major offence, such as intentional exposure of a Muggle to the existence of magic, unintentional but preventable exposure of five or more Muggles to the existence of magic, conspiracy against the Ministry of Magic, attempted subversion of a Ministry official, or any other intentional or negligent act causing significant harm, permanent injury, or death to a person or persons not incurred in the interests of self-defence, the twenty-four hour courtesy period will be rendered void and your arrest entrusted to the Ministry official responsible for the discovery of your offence. As per regulation, any Ministry official responsible for the apprehension of a person suspected of committing a level three _‘Disturbance’_ or higher is authorized to use destructive magic should the culprit resist arrest or attempt retaliation. Any complaints regarding injury, mental or magical trauma, or death incurred during an arrest by a Ministry official should be made to the Ministry of Magic Public Information Services and redirected to the appropriate branch within one year following the incident. A suspension of this time limit is awarded to those suffering from loss of memory, loss of sanity, catatonia, or coma, to be reinstated at such a time as the complainant regains the memories, abilities, or state of consciousness required to pursue legal action. In the event that the complainant has been killed by the actions of a Ministry official and sees fit to file a complaint while in a non-living form, this time limit is to be suspended indefinitely, though the Ministry reminds all members of the non-living community that complaints filed against Ministry officials who have themselves become deceased are the responsibility of the Spirit Division and that legal action cannot be pursued if the accused is no longer present in either a corporeal or incorporeal form. In the event that a complainant is killed after the incident occurred and through no fault of the accused, the one year time limit is still to be considered in effect, as the complainant was sound of both body and mind during and following the incident.”

He paused again.

Eren stared at him, still processing his dry, mechanical recitation.

“Did you go to school here?” Levi asked him abruptly, and then interrupted his startled confirmation with a, “good. We’re going to be teaching on school grounds, so you’re also required to abide by the rules of the school whenever possible. If, for whatever reason, they conflict with Ministry law, assume that Ministry law takes priority. If you think you’re not allowed to, you’re probably not, so don’t. If you really don’t know, ask. Do you understand?”

Eren opened his mouth and realized, not without some embarrassment, how incredibly overwhelmed he really was when all that came out was a dazed-sounding,

“Ye… ah…?”

He heard Hanji’s smile in their voice.

“Don’t do anything illegal when you’re with the magic police, Eren,” they mock-whispered.

“Don’t do anything illegal when you’re with the magic police, Eren,” Levi repeated far too seriously. “Sign the damned waiver and behave.”

“Yes, sir,” he whispered, somehow all the more starstruck for how intimidated he felt.

***

The discovery he made upon standing up would always be at somewhat odds with that unforgettable first impression Levi had made on him.

From the angle Eren had been looking up at him while sitting, his muscular chest and broad shoulders had seemed like they could only belong to someone enormous- to someone whose shadow threw others into a reverent hush.

Standing side-by-side, however, Levi’s height was such that he would have had to stand on tip-toe to peer over Eren’s shoulder.

He was, in fact, a very little man with a very large presence.

Eren hadn’t said anything about it, half because he knew better, and half because Levi’s eyes had narrowed at his double-take in a way he understood very clearly as an invitation to see what would happen if he did.

He said nothing, but he couldn’t stop staring.

The giddy terror of being so near to someone who so clearly encompassed everything he’d idealized and failed to become made it difficult not to.

He had nodded through Levi’s exasperation at Hanji for talking so much without managing to explain anything of value to Eren.

“We’ll be staying in Hogsmeade, lodging at the Three Broomsticks Inn,” Levi had told him while they were leaving the castle, and he’d just nodded, dumbstruck.

 “My room is across the hall from yours, but if you need anything, ask the innkeeper first,” Levi had told him while Eren trotted up the stairs at the Three Broomsticks behind him, and he’d just nodded, dumbstruck.

“The cost of your meals will be provided for you, but any tab you run on drinks is your own to pay for- you’re not being paid to drink swill and slack off,” Levi had told him while they waited for their food in the smoky dining area before nursing his own thoroughly alcoholic Treacher’s Tonic in silence.

Eren had just nodded, dumbstruck.

“Don’t get the wrong idea,” Levi was saying, perhaps a little uncomfortably, as Eren continued to stare at him, “I’m not going to look for excuses to get you in trouble- it’s just that when I’m teaching, we are both representatives of the Ministry of Magic, so if you do anything you shouldn’t, I have to set the example by penalizing you for it. It’s nothing personal.”

Eren nodded, dumbstruck.

Levi sighed. “This is going to be a long damn summer if you’re really that scared of me,” he muttered, pushing his plate away with a discontented frown. “Just- relax, you. Do you really think I never broke any rules when I went to school here? It’s a miracle I qualified for training.”

Eren’s bubble of tongue-tied hero worship popped like it had been only soap and water. “You went to Hogwarts?” he asked, accidentally setting the side of his hand down in a puddle of sauce on his plate in his excitement.

Levi looked taken aback, then a little amused. “So you do talk.”

Eren thought long and hard, or as long as he could stand before remembering that his deductive skills were lacking, which wasn’t very long at all.

In the end, he just asked.

“So what are you, then?”

Levi’s reaction to the question was a little odd- his face went stiff and then smooth and distant.

“I’m Roma,” he said after a long moment, eyes watchful. Eren’s confusion must have been palpable, because he chewed the side of his tongue indecisively for a moment and then added,

“a gypsy,”

with a look of incredibly sour resignation.

Eren just looked at him, at a loss for words.

Levi looked right back, and, after it became apparent Eren wasn’t going to comment, relaxed visibly and ordered him a drink.

Eren looked at it, bewildered. “Why did you buy me a drink?”

“Because you didn’t make a joke about gypsy magic,” Levi answered drily. “Most wizards who ask don’t seem to realize I have no reason to laugh at that.” He curled his lip in distaste. “No common sense.”

Eren considered not saying anything, but in the end, his curiosity won out.

“…I was asking what House you were in,” he mumbled sheepishly.

“Oh.” To his credit, Levi recovered quickly, but he still looked so much more like an embarrassed teacher than an esteemed agent of the law for long enough that Eren suddenly grasped something he’d always struggled with.

“Sorry,” he said, suddenly marveling at the thought that this person, this man who’d become everything he once wanted to be, probably tripped over his own feet in the morning while he was still waking up, too. “I wasn’t very clear, I just sort of-”

“Hufflepuff,” Levi interrupted awkwardly. “I was in Hufflepuff.”

Eren really didn’t mean to shout.

It was a bad habit.

“Really?” he crowed, surprised. “I thought for sure you were going to say Gryffindor or Ravenclaw, I mean-”

“Do you have a problem with that?” Levi asked, unexpectedly defensive.

“No!” Eren started, and then raised his hands defensively when Levi’s eyes narrowed, laughing despite himself. “No, no- I mean I was a Hufflepuff,” he explained, rubbing the back of his neck and then grimacing when he realized he’d smeared sauce all over himself. “It’s just kind of cool,” he added, trying to wipe himself off surreptitiously.

Levi looked amused enough for Eren to know he hadn’t gotten away with it, but he also looked a little thoughtful.

“Everyone who met me on the train was arguing over whether I was going to be in Slytherin or Gryffindor,” he admitted. Eren leaned forward, curious, and received a very small, very strange little smile for his interest. “Do you remember what the Hat sounds like? When it talks to you, I mean.”

Eren snorted at the memory. “Yeah! Oh, yeah, do I ever,” he reminisced. “My sister tried to convince the Hat to put me in the same House as her- but she got put in Ravenclaw,” he said conspiratorially, and grinned when Levi snorted and then covered his mouth apologetically. “No, don’t worry, I know better than anyone that I’m not clever, you’re allowed to laugh. But yeah, they put the Hat on my head and the first thing it said to me was that hard work _‘can’t substitute for wit’_ so I couldn’t be in Ravenclaw.”

Levi grimaced like he wasn’t sure if he should offer his condolences.

Eren waved dismissively again. “I was so happy- look, I love my sister, but I didn’t want to be stuck in the same House as her for seven years- we’re the same age,” he explained when Levi wrinkled his nose in confusion. “After that, the Hat told me I’d make a good Gryffindor, which was cool, but it sorted me into Hufflepuff, which was still fine. Honestly? I was just happy to have some space,” he confessed.

Levi leaned back in his chair, looking a little nostalgic. “Huh. After all that build-up on the train, all it said to me was _‘oh, never what they expect you to be, are you?’_ ”

Eren couldn’t contain his laughter.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duelling, ducking, and duking it out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What to you mean, I haven't updated in a while?
> 
> ...I've been sick and playing video games.
> 
> Edit: Oh yeah, I meant to say the following- never, ever box someone's ears. The act forces air into the ear canal and can cause permanent hearing damage or loss. Do not do this.

He woke the next morning to brisk, insistent knocking.

He wasn’t an early or easy riser by nature, and there was a moment perhaps too long to be called a moment in which he had no idea where he was.

It was as he blinked away bleariness and sleepily traced an unfamiliar seam in the ceiling with his eyes that he recalled.

The knocking continued, unabated, as he lay in bed and prayed it would stop, so he staggered out of bed to the door.

Now, there was something to be said about early risers, and of Eren’s opinion of them.

All at once, he both admired and bitterly resented Levi’s clear-eyed stare, immaculate hair, and neat- almost prim- way of dressing himself at far too early in the morning.

“What-” he started to croak, only to be interrupted.

“Good, you’re up,” Levi said, nodding approvingly.

His body may have left the bed, but his brain had not. “…I _wasn’t_ ,” he protested belatedly as Levi entered his room rather presumptuously, casting a disapproving frown at the small pile of discarded clothing he’d already left on the floor.

The look Levi gave him was almost louder than the words he answered with.

“Well, you are now,” he said, as though Eren had no excuse. “Get dressed.”

Eren was beginning to suspect it would be a very long summer after all.

***

Over breakfast, the words,

“What do you know about fist-fighting?”

would force him to completely re-evaluate his half-formed opinion of Levi.

“Uh,” he answered around a mouthful of toast, trying to decide if the question was a test.

Levi just continued eating his sausages as if he hadn’t spoken.

Eren mulled it over in his mind apprehensively.

In the end, he opted for honesty.

“A little.”

Well, partial honesty.

The truth was that Eren had rather a lot of experience with brawling, and not all of it was restricted to his wilder days at Hogwarts.

He still had a formidable temper- it was milder, less easily triggered than it had once been, but he hadn’t outgrown it.

Levi hummed contemplatively at his fork, still apparently engrossed in his breakfast.

It was only after he’d swallowed and had a sip of his tea that he answered. “How much is a little?”

Eren wasn’t sure how to judge the atmosphere. He had a good instinct for people, but Levi was markedly abnormal in a way he hadn’t quite identified yet.

After the proverbial ice had broken, they had spoken quite a bit, and he’d discovered more about the personality under the disinterested veneer of professionalism Levi wore- he moved confidently and spoke frankly for the most part, but seemed inclined to socialize in halting spurts, rushing strange and half-formed sentiments out of his mouth like they burned him, emphasizing his frustrated pauses with sharp, unsure little gesticulations, and frequently lapsing into slightly perturbed-looking silences.

He made eye contact inconsistently, and always either for disconcertingly long periods or not at all.

Eren just wasn’t sure what to do with him yet.

“How much is a little allowed to be?” he asked cautiously.

Levi finally raised his eyes. Eren was relieved to find that he looked more amused than anything.

“So not just a little, then,” he mused, voice dry.

***

“Um,” Eren faltered, “why are we doing this?”

It was a question he had asked before and still hadn’t received an adequate answer to.

True to form, Levi just nodded to his wand. “Get into position.”

“I don’t-”

“I prefer demonstration to explanation,” he said, which Eren supposed was as close to an answer as he was going to get.

Even without taking his faulty magic into account, the prospect of dueling an experienced Auror sent a strange sort of fearful elation through him.

Levi didn’t look like the sort of person who went easy on his partners- in fact, he struck Eren as sort of person who would consider that disrespectful.

“Oh god,” Eren breathed nervously as he raised his wand and steadied himself.

Levi was _fast_.

He’d cast and was dodging before Eren could speak, and the sudden inversion of the world and distance of the ground from his feet would have completely disoriented him if he wasn’t so used to it from years of Quidditch.

The first spell he attempted came out weak and missed Levi by what felt like miles. The ground hit him with a vengeance as Levi feinted away, dropping his wand tip.

The second spell he cast was utterly unintentional, more of a gut reaction to looking up and meeting the hardness in Levi’s eyes than an attempt at defense.

His wand shuddered in his hand and the ground beneath both of them buckled, sending Levi staggering.

He was torn as to whether or not he was supposed to act on his advantage, but Levi put an end to the situation.

“What the hell was that?” he demanded, stance wide.

Eren took his time getting to his feet, still a little light-headed.

“Probably a discharge from my wand,” he admitted, considering miserably that Levi would probably take his poor magical ability as a fault, “it happens sometimes.”

When Levi held out his hand, Eren wanted to refuse.

He still placed his wand in that open palm, however reluctantly.

“Hazel?” Levi muttered. “Well, hazel wood is prone to these things, but… it just doesn’t make any sense.”

Eren was eying the short, slim fingers holding his wand nervously, still trying to decide how to ask for it back when Levi caught him doing it.

His smile was a little strange- almost a grimace, Eren thought.

“I’m not going to break it over a little stray magic,” he said wryly, handing it back. As Eren took it from him, he added, “but it doesn’t make any sense,” in a low, slightly exasperated tone. “Wands channel the magic of their users, they’re-”

At first, he thought it might have been a dramatic pause.

As the seconds stretched on, it became increasingly obvious he’d just forgotten the word.

“Do you-”

“Conduits,” Levi finished suddenly. “Never mind- now show me how you fight without magic,” he said briskly.

Eren baulked.

“What?”

“Show me what you can do with your fists, not your wand,” he repeated.

He was about to ask why when his instincts prickled at the way Levi was shifting into a lower stance.

 _‘He’s not going to wait for me to ask questions,’_ he registered, and the rest came naturally.

Levi was _hellishly_ fast.

Eren was better at dodging punches than curses, but he still only barely evaded Levi’s first jab, and even then, his evasion seemed to send him _into_ the next one.

He fell, so he rolled, and when Levi’s feet came into view, he hooked a leg around one and tripped him.

It only occurred to him as he was rising and Levi was falling that the move might’ve been a little less professional than was expected of him, but the way Levi rolled fluidly to his feet and went immediately back to coming at him put that particular concern on hold.

There was no space to swing, and no time to grapple- it was all he could do to block and keep his feet under him.

“I said fight, not defend,” Levi told him sharply as did his best to stop his block from being broken.

“You’re too-” he started, and then grunted, temper flaring as Levi jabbed him in the ribs. “You’re too fucking fast!” he snarled, hitting without thinking.

Or aiming.

His concern over being seen as a dirty fighter vanished completely in the shadow of the mild horror he felt at the look of vague surprise on Levi’s face as he cuffed him upside the head.

“I’m so sorry,” he said immediately, drawing back his hand like he’d been burned.

There was a long, uncomfortable moment in which Levi just stared at him.

Eren wasn’t immediately able to identify the sound he made as a laugh- it was more of a quiet huff.

“Not bad,” he said, looking pleased but a little pained. “Of course, now I can’t fucking hear out of my left ear,” he amended, “but not bad.”

Any relief he felt disappeared immediately.

“Oh god, _I’m so sorry_ -”

***

After a long lecture from the school nurse on all the reasons why it was a terrible idea to box someone’s ears, even accidentally, Eren found himself in the uncomfortable position of someone who felt inclined to grovel but had no idea how to.

His efforts just seemed to be making Levi either irritated or uncomfortable.

“Really, I didn’t mean-”

“I know,” Levi answered for the thousandth time, touching his ear reflexively with a look of mild discomfort after he spoke.

It didn’t help. Eren couldn’t help but feel that he’d refused the nurse’s aid as a way to teach him a lesson of some kind, and the idea was making him antsy.

“Why couldn’t you just let her fix you,” he mumbled under his breath, agitated.

Even with one ear out of commission, he wasn’t spared Levi’s sharp hearing.

“What was that?”

Despite asking, Levi had clearly unravelled the meaning of his frustrations before Eren could start to fumble out an excuse.

“Eren,” he started, and Eren tensed automatically. “Do you know what magic does to a human body?”

He hesitated. “I… no.”

“Neither do I,” Levi told him simply, still sorting supplies into neat piles and slotting them into the box Eren was carrying even as he spoke. “None of us do.” He paused to scrutinize a dusty set of glass vials for so long that Eren started to wonder if he’d finished speaking. “You know, when you work for the Ministry, you hear a lot of strange things. Most of them aren’t true or, at least, aren’t true enough to worry about,” he allowed, tucking the vials carefully into the box without lifting his eyes from his work. “But after a while, you start to see patterns in the things people are saying.”

He stopped suddenly and turned away. What Eren thought at first was an enigmatic sigh turned out to be a rather explosive sneeze.

“Eugh, Christ,” he growled, pulling a crisp white kerchief and tying it over his mouth and nose. “Unbelievable. It’s like they haven’t cleaned since I graduated,” he groused. “Anyway- rumours. Patterns. One person tells you her uncle landed in St. Mungo’s from nothing more than a simple holiday hex, well, you don’t think much of that.”

When they lifted, his eyes were steady and piercing over his impromptu mask. “But six, seven- ten- twenty- then you start to wonder. An ex-Auror snapping? That’s expected. Perfectly ordinary witches and wizards? No.” His brows furrowed. “You’re probably thinking something like that couldn’t be kept quiet, that you’d have heard something by now.”

Eren hadn’t been thinking anything of the sort, actually. Levi was doing that thing where he made unbroken eye contact for an uncomfortably long time, and the intensity of his stare made it rather hard to think at all.

“Let me tell you something else, Eren,” he continued. “The first thing you learn in the Ministry is when to keep your mouth shut. Do you know why you haven’t heard anything?”

“No, sir,” he answered automatically and then flinched.

Levi’s stare turned a little wry at his slip. “Nobody wants to hear that magic might not be the answer to every trifling ache and pain- magic is convenient, and until someone who can’t be ignored winds up a ward of the state over something that should’ve been nothing, no one’s going to risk coming out and being the one who says it first.” He snorted quietly and dropped his stare, turning back to his work. “As it is, the world we live in would tear someone apart, invent all manner of reasons to call them barking mad or worse, before it would even consider stopping to think about something we all already know.”

Eren waited patiently for him to continue, at this point genuinely quite curious.

After one long minute stretched into three, and then into five, it became painfully obvious that he had no intention of continuing.

“And what’s that?” Eren prompted hopefully.

Levi sent him a blank stare, eyes flickering to the practice targets in his hands and back.

“What is it that we all already know?” he asked, hoping he didn’t sound too dense for it.

Levi blinked and then made a soft sound of comprehension, like he’d had a lapse of focus and thought he’d said or done something and had really forgotten to altogether. “Oh. We know less about magic than we do about God- any god or gods, if you believe in that,” he said. “We don’t know what it is, where it comes from, or even why some of us can use it and others can’t. We call ourselves wizards and we call _them_ Muggles, but we don’t know why we’re different, really.” He hummed thoughtfully at the target he was holding. “Magic is fickle and strange and Muggles are right to be afraid of it- it would probably do us all good to be a little less complacent about a force than can drive a man insane with agony just as easily as it can turn a teacup on a saucer so the handle faces left." He looked up again, but just sort of stared off into nothing for a second. “What I’m saying is that I don’t like relying on magic for things my body can fix just as well,” he said awkwardly.

“Oh, okay. Yeah,” Eren answered just as awkwardly, “that makes sense.”

As strange as the encounter was, he still felt a little closer with the man who would live across the hall from him that summer.

***

It was only when classes actually began that he found out why Levi had asked him to fight him without magic.

“You all think you’re here to learn defensive magic- and magic’s fine. It’s useful,” he told his class as they shifted uncertainly on the lawn, clearly as puzzled as to their location as Eren himself was. “But reliance on magic is what separates the strong from the weak.”

A ripple of unease went through the students. Eren tried to smile reassuringly, but the lack of answering smiles told him he looked just as uneasy as they did.

Levi fixed them with a hard stare. “My name is Levi. You will call me Levi. You may call me Professor Levi if you feel you absolutely have to, by which I mean only if the idea of calling your professor by his first name makes you so uncomfortable you start thinking you’re going to sh- soil yourself, but I am not a professor, and you should remember that. I am an Auror and a representative of the Ministry of Magic.”

Another ripple.

“The kid to my left is my assistant. His name is Eren. Remember it, because I guarantee you he has a lot more patience for your questions than I do.” His hand shot out to point rather rudely at one of the second-floor windows. “The one staring at you from up there is Professor Hanji Zoë. They will also be assisting throughout the term, but I don’t recommend asking them any questions unless you’re prepared for more answers than you know what to do with.”

Yet another ripple, but this time it was laughter. Hanji waved cheerfully from their window.

“Let’s get a few things out of the way- no, I am not part elf.” Eren choked with surprise, and the sound he made set off another bout of giggling in the students. Levi sent him a look that seemed somehow more exasperated than genuinely angry. “No, I am not part goblin.” One of the students was biting his fist surreptitiously to keep from laughing, and another was going quite spectacularly red. “And no, I am not amused by how funny you find that.”

Their laughter dwindled in his cold silence.

Eren shuffled uncomfortably on the grass.

“If I had been any of those, would it have been fine for you to laugh at me?” he asked them coolly. No one answered. “What I am doesn’t matter. What you are doesn’t matter. _Who_ you are doesn’t matter. This is not a class about being a better witch or wizard- or magic user,” he added, nodding up at Hanji where they were watching from the castle. “This is not the class you thought you were taking.”

The unease was back, and it was palpable now, a thickness in the air as the students traded uneasy glances and shifted their weight from foot to foot.

“Reliance on magic,” he repeated, “is what separates the strong from the weak. Roberts,” he snapped at a girl whispering to the boy beside her. “Yes, I know your name. Roberts, can you do wandless magic?”

“No,” Roberts answered, running a hand over the dark, coarse hair at the base of her neck. “Uh- no, sir,” she amended after Levi continued to stare at her.

“If a Muggle disarms you, what are you?”

Somebody towards the right side of the twenty-odd students snorted derisively.

Levi’s eyes shot towards them. “Moreland, do you have something to say?”

Moreland looked nervous in a way that Eren recognized instantly- he had the look of anxiety and self-conscious that went hand-in-hand with false bravado. _‘A wannabe hero,’_ Eren sympathized.

“I wouldn’t get disarmed by a Muggle, sir,” Moreland answered, more confidently than he felt.

Levi crooked a finger. “Do you have your wand? Come here. Stand in front of me.”

When the boy did, Levi abruptly slapped his wand out of his hand, sending it bouncing through the grass. “A Muggle’s just disarmed you. What are you now?” When Moreland startled out of his shock and lunged for his wand, Levi grabbed him around the neck with one arm and twisted the other behind his back.

“If you can’t do wandless magic,” he barked at the students, “then without your wand, you are a weaker Muggle.” He let Moreland go and the boy scrambled after his wand, which had begun to roll down the slope of the hill. “You may laugh at Muggles and dismiss them, but the reason we hide from them is because they have burnt and beaten us before. The fact of the matter is this: your body is weaker than a Muggle’s body because you use magic to lift an iron pot from the floor where a Muggle uses muscle. Moreland, sit your ass back down and listen,” he snapped at the grass-stained boy lingering awkwardly at Eren’s elbow.

Eren shot him a crooked grin and a shrug as he hurried past.

“Wizards are weak,” Levi continued. “There are exceptions to this, of course- anyone involved in the care of creatures has to have a certain physical strength, and there are those who believe the strength of magic is intertwined with the strength of the body, but most wizards are weak. This includes dark wizards.”

Eren suddenly understood.

He wasn’t aware of having made any sound, but the amused look Levi sent him told him he probably had.

“Eren is weak with magic,” Levi said frankly, and Eren cringed. “When we duelled, he was instantly outmatched.”

The students were looking at him with a mixture of incredulity and pity. He looked away.

“But,” Levi said, “when we duelled without magic, he managed to box one of my ears so hard I couldn’t hear out of it properly for almost a week.”

The students burst into a flurry of conflicted giggles and whispers. Somebody mumbled something Eren didn’t quite catch, but it was obvious that Levi did.

“I don’t go easy on my partners,” he said sharply to a dark-haired girl near the back. “It’s condescending and encourages complacency.”

Eren felt a little strange in being right about that.

“I may look like this,” Levi said quietly, “but I have been an Auror for over ten years, and in that time, no one has ever landed a blow like that on me.”

Eren felt even stranger about that.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I haven't touched this work in almost a year and you might notice a stylistic change halfway through this chapter or something because I started writing it last year and don't really remember the exact flow I was operating under when I did. But I still remember where this was going and how much fun I was having with it!
> 
> Also, yeah, it's this work, back from the void.

“Kennedy, that’s- elbows in, feet forward, remember?”

The girl shot him an awkward look as he gently guided her arms closer to her sides and nodded to her feet.

“Um,” she started, “can you just call me Julianne? It’s weird calling you by your first name when you’re not calling us by ours.” She fidgeted for a second, so he waited. “And you’re not that much older than us,” she added shyly.

Somebody wolf-whistled from across the greenhouse. Judging by the flash of dark, fastidiously braided hair, he guessed it was Roberts.

He ignored her.

“Sure,” he said, smiling. “I’ve just been calling you that because I don’t know your first names,” he admitted. “Levi calls you- yeah, you know.”

Judging by her laugh, she did know. He stepped back to survey her form, half-hearing Levi drilling the students on the other end of the glass structure. “Looks good.”

She grinned, but still looked a little uncertain. “I’m not sure we’re supposed to be doing, though.”

Truth be told, neither did he, but he assumed he had an obligation to appear otherwise.

“I guess I’m helping out anybody who’s struggling with the physical component of this course,” he theorized, and then winced when he realized how that sounded. “Besides, your Herbology grades are exceptional- I know for a fact that Levi doesn’t think you need any help with wilderness survival.”

Her face brightened a little, so he figured his attempt at damage control had passed. “No, I mean,” she started again, slowly and carefully, “I still don’t really know _why_ we’re doing this? What does this have to do with Advanced Defense?”

He had no idea.

“Don’t screw around with the fuckhead. Trust the fuckhead,” Roberts said in an exaggerated American accent, peering over the dense green blades of the resident plot of goosegrass. She shot Eren a lopsided and entirely unapologetic smile. “Oops, sorry.”

“Shouldn’t you be with the rest of the class?” he asked her, more because he was supposed to than because he didn’t already know the answer.

Two weeks in and he had already given up on reining in the girl- where Moreland had turned from boyish bravado to a brand of hero worship he found uncomfortably familiar, Roberts had apparently pegged them both for what they were.

Eren was, of course, fundamentally soft-hearted. Hotheaded, yes, but easy to diffuse with the right non sequitur or well-timed joke.

Levi was the sort of person who didn’t believe in restricting a competent student to the pace of the group.

Roberts, as it turned out, was very competent, and smart enough not to cause trouble when Levi was looking.

Julianne grimaced at her. “Keela, some of us are trying to be _proper_ students,” she scolded.

“Yeah, sure,” she drawled, eying Eren with a knowing look before glancing back to her classmate. “Sure, Jules. Proper student, yeah.”

***

“Is this going to be a problem?” Levi asked him after class, and Eren shot him a puzzled look. “Kennedy’s _thing_ for you, is that going to be a problem?”

He gawked for a moment. “No! No, she’s sixteen, Levi.”

Levi’s flat look clearly told him that wasn’t what he was concerned about. “You won’t treat her differently for it?”

“No,” he repeated firmly. When Levi turned away with a grunt, he decided to add something, more out of curiosity than anything, and it was,

“Besides, she’s barking up the wrong tree, y’know?”

Levi just hummed inattentively and said, “is that so?” which was a disappointing, if not entirely unexpected, answer.

Eren wasn’t stupid- or, at least, he wasn’t unobservant, especially when it came to himself. Academia had never been his strength, but he had always had a certain canniness that his teachers often found time to remark on in their assessments of him.

He couldn’t pinpoint the moment he’d started noticing Levi as someone he might hold _that_ sort of interest in, but he suspected it had been right around the time he realized Levi was, in fact, a real person and not an embodiment of Justice and Discipline, as he’d first been inclined to believe.

Eren knew he was generally considered an attractive person- it had been made clear to him before, by a great many people.

And he’d noticed fairly immediately that Levi wasn’t conventionally attractive- Eren was increasingly sure the man took meticulous care of not just his body and mind, but his skin and hair as well, and there was a bemusing air of prim vanity that surrounded his crisp and sometimes unusual way of dressing himself, but there was both a rawness to his facial features that couldn’t really be called beautiful and a strange delicacy to his bone structure that couldn’t be called handsome.

But he was interesting to look at. His large, heavy-lidded eyes, oddly discreet nose, and slightly downturned mouth- they were interesting.

Eren was someone whose interest tended to wander if it wasn’t held completely rapt.

Levi was a lot of things, he mused, examining the stiff cant of his back as he walked away, but he wasn’t boring.

***

It wasn’t like he expected anything to happen.

Levi was the sort of person who came across as ambiguously asexual- his mannerisms could be misconstrued as sensual by someone who wanted to see them as such, Eren supposed, but viewed honestly, the body language Levi directed towards anyone and everyone was a mixture of awkwardness and professional indifference.

And Eren wasn’t fifteen anymore- he didn’t need to have his interest reciprocated to let it make his days a little more eventful.

And they were eventful.

Being grabbed by the back of his collar when Levi wanted to ask him a question about his scrawling cursive would have been eventful regardless of his feelings for the man.

The subsequent lean over Levi’s shoulder, which confirmed for him that he did, in fact, wear some sort of scent or was in the habit of using a scented product, was perhaps more eventful for him than it might have otherwise been.

It was always little things, and he doubted Levi had noticed.

The man had revealed himself as belonging to that formidable- yet slightly absurd- genus of individuals with an uncanny ability to identify expected responses, no matter how well-hidden, and even more uncanny ability to miss unexpected ones, no matter how embarrassingly obvious to everyone else.

They’d fallen into a comfortable rhythm of content admirer and obliviously admired, and Eren was determined to be happy with that.

It wasn’t, really, like he expected anything to happen.

He supposed that was why it did, at least in part.

Their daily routine was simple and monotonous- they rose, they ate, they reviewed the day’s lesson, they travelled to the school grounds, they taught, they set the students to their exercises, they assisted the students who struggled with their exercises, they travelled back from the school grounds, they ate, they reviewed the results of the day’s lesson, and they slept.

Occasionally, a drink was had somewhere between the third-last and the last. Levi had claimed Eren would be paying for his own ‘swill’, as he’d so kindly put it, but thus far, he hadn’t had the chance.

It was the last Friday of the first month, and the students had just completed their first examination.

No one had failed, which Eren thought was cause for celebration, and he supposed that could also have been why Levi was drinking with a look of such weary relief.

They’d set to talking, and he hadn’t even realized the lengths to which the heat of his last few rounds of Bilshen’s Firewhiskey had warmed more than his stomach until he went to rise and ended up slumping back in his chair with a laugh.

Levi snorted at him, enviably clear-eyed. “I thought old Hufflepuffs were known for being good with drink,” he commented.

“Are we?” Eren asked him, a little surprised. “No one told me that.”

“Clearly,” Levi said drily, and he laughed.

The night air was unseasonably warm for a Scottish summer- thick and humid with the coming rain.

He wasn’t sure if that was why Levi had opted to sit outside. A drink or so in, he’d suddenly expressed a desire for fresh air, and the barkeeper had obligingly allowed them to move their chairs to just outside the back entrance.

He’d said it was a simple favour for summer boarders, but the careful glance he’d given Levi had suggested otherwise.

Whatever his reasons, it wasn’t just the scenery that had changed with the move.

The hum of idle conversations, the clinking of glasses on tables and bottles on the bar, the scraping of chairs, the tapping of forks- it all filtered through the open door to Levi’s left, blended and muted into one sound that was never quite enough to break the stillness of the evening.

“Should probably be getting upstairs soon,” Levi was murmuring, though maybe only to himself.

Eren barely heard.

The light from the doorway seemed so yellow to his eyes, like warm butter melting away against the dark blue of a twilight sky too young for stars. It painted the angles of Levi’s face with strange shadows.

“Though it’s almost a shame to waste a night like this inside,” Levi was musing, though maybe not to anyone else in particular.

Eren watched his lips move. He didn’t know if it was the whiskey or the hush or both, but very suddenly, he felt like it would be strange to raise his voice above a whisper.

The dark hollow under Levi’s jaw looked like a warm place the part of him that wasn’t quite awake anymore wanted to crawl into for the night.

He wasn’t actually aware of leaning in, or even of intending to do much of anything at all, and his lips were too numb with drink to tell what he’d done with them- if he’d done anything at all- but he tasted the scent of skin under an all-but-faded fragrance in the same moment he felt Levi go rigid beside him.

He didn’t jerk away, or fumble, or freeze- he had already righted himself in his chair and was settling back into it by the time the reality of the situation began to register within him.

The increasingly bewildered look he could see growing on Levi’s face might’ve been comical on another night, or after another drink- he’d only turned far enough to look at him, and his posture hadn’t really changed, but there was a fixed quality to it that reminded Eren inescapably of an animal catching sight of a predator.

 _“Don’t notice me,”_ his stillness said, _“I’m not here.”_

“I,” Eren said slowly, “should sleep.” He rose carefully, gave Levi’s knees a wide berth on his way past without really knowing why, remembered his drink, handed it to Levi, and left.

Levi’s wide, startled eyes seemed to follow him even after he’d locked his door, and no one could see him at all.

“Well,” he murmured to no one at all, “I did that. I absolutely did that.”

He still slept the moment he closed his eyes.

***

He both wished for and dreaded the moment they met again.

There was no moment of coincidence when he opened his door- no finding him eating at a table when he went down for breakfast- no being caught scraping together a forkful by his arrival.

With every passing minute that the inevitable didn’t come, Eren felt a stronger urge to board the next train and stave it off indefinitely.

He was actually standing in the door to his room, staring at his unkempt suitcase with a sort of blank consideration, when he heard the door across the hall unlock. He looked almost out of reflex.

“Good morning,” Levi acknowledged, and handed him an envelope.

It wasn’t a dismissal from his post, as his addled brain was inclined to assume. It was from Mikasa, as every letter he’d received had been.

“Thanks,” he answered, and then, belatedly, “uh, good morning.”

Levi shrugged. “You really need an owl,” he said for what was maybe the eighth or ninth time that summer. “I don’t care if she starts sending you Howlers for not answering, this is the last time I’ll bring up your mail for you- either remember to ask for it downstairs or get a damned owl.”

This was also something he had said eight or nine times previously, and it was no less an empty threat than it had been previously.

“For sure,” Eren said.

He did not get an owl, nor did he start asking for his mail.

***

Levi pretending it didn’t happen was fine with Eren.

Pretending it didn’t happen worked.

It was a reaction that answered his question ably enough without creating further problems and, as someone who often found himself dealing with the aftermath of his impulsive nature, this was something he understood and appreciated.

What he did not understand or appreciate was why, a week later, Levi finally began showing symptoms of feeling a little strange about the whole affair, and after enduring nearly three days of unpredictable behaviour from Levi, Eren was starting to feel frustrated.

They were discussing the progress of a few students over an early dinner when it happened: a knee bumped a knee under the table, Levi froze up momentarily, and the mood went odd.

“Alright: it never happened,” Eren told him without preamble. “Stop thinking about it.”

The inscrutable, slightly wide-eyed look Levi gave him assured him that this probably wasn’t an option. He sighed and turned back to his plate, frowning.

He’d almost managed to drown the awkwardness of it in enough gravy to sail away on when Levi spoke.

“There are,” he muttered, “a lot of things I’m not very good at.”

Eren glanced up at him. “Alright.”

He looked pained. “No, I mean- there are some things I have never been competent with, no matter how hard I’ve tried.”

Eren pushed a chunk of mashed potato into his sea of gravy and watched it turn to mush. “When I finally managed to turn a teacup into a mouse, my Transfiguration professor nearly cried,” he said wryly. “What’s your point?”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say or do right now,” Levi admitted. Eren sighed again.

“You don’t have to say or do anything,” he explained patiently. “Look, Levi, it’s fine. It doesn’t matter. I’m used to making a fool of myself, and I get over things quickly. Really, don’t worry about it.”

The pinched look on Levi’s face said quite clearly that he was worrying about it.

“I’m-” he started suddenly, “I’m saying it takes me a long time to decide how I feel about things.”

Eren could feel a weird, incredulous little smile making its way across his mouth. “ _Look_ , you don’t have to explain anything to me- I got it. I’m over it. It’s fine. So what were you saying about Funderburk?”

“I’m not-”

He was still worrying.

“Hey, did I ever tell you about the time someone enchanted the goal hoops on the Quidditch pitch to sing about me being the most thick-headed Keeper in Hogwarts’ history every time I got near them? I was pretty proud of that-”

Levi made a noise that might’ve been a strangled snort. “Shut up, you. I’m trying to tell you something and you keep changing the the subject-”

“But I’m so good at it!” he mock-protested, grinning despite himself. “When-”

“It takes me so long to decide how whether I want something that it’s usually gone by the time I want it,” Levi blurted out, and Eren stared at him.

Against his better judgement and his sense of self-preservation, he started laughing.

“Are you serious?” he wheezed.

“Yes,” Levi said, a touch stiffly.

He wasn’t sure why it was so funny to him. It just _was_.

“Well, this is one of the worse reactions that’s gotten,” Levi muttered.

Eren balked. “How do you mean?”

The look he got in return was tired and a little affronted. “I understand if you think it’s ironic, but if I knew you’d be this much of an ass about it, I wouldn’t have told you. I know you said you get over things quickly-”

Eren caught on to what was happening a little later than someone else might have.

“I _do_ get over things quickly,” he interrupted, “but- okay, let’s assume that one day, I woke up desperately craving a slice of cake, y’know? Just _dying_ for it. Now, on this particular day, I can’t have any cake- it just isn’t happening. And that’s fine. I’ll get over my craving. Now,” he drawled, “because I couldn’t have cake on _that_ day, it seems to you to stand to reason that I am never going to want cake _ever again_. Never, Levi. No cake.”

Levi was starting to look a little embarrassed. “That’s not what I was-”

 _“No, I’ve sworn off cake forever,”_ Eren mocked in an overdrawn falsetto, _“I shan’t touch the dreadful stuff, nay, nevermore-”_

“Why are you being ridiculous?” Levi hissed, eyes darting towards the other tables.

“Because _you’re_ being ridiculous,” Eren told him flatly. “If it’s that you’re just slow about realizing that you want me, then you have to say so.”

“I’m slow,” Levi said, though not without some stiffness.

Eren looked at him.

“I’m slow and I,” he repeated awkwardly, “want you to… eat cake?”

He looked terribly uncomfortable and more than a little bewildered by what he was saying by the time he finished saying it.

Eren started laughing all over again.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Anti-Piracy Ad Voice] _You wouldn't steal a magic wand..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finished this more than a week ago and then just... didn't post it, for some reason.

Despite saying that he wanted Eren to “eat cake,” as it were, it quickly became apparent that Levi had very little idea how to go about making that happen.

If his body language had indicated an opinion of “eating cake” as being an activity that mostly involved appreciating the presence of the cake and enjoying its company- and maybe, sometimes, when he felt so inclined, having a whiff of the icing- Eren would have been perfectly fine with that.

As it was, Levi’s body language did not indicate so mild an opinion, which was simple enough to discern.

He was precisely as subtle as he was observant, which was to say: very or not at all, depending on the circumstances.

Overnight, he seemed to have developed a habit of unconsciously tracking Eren’s movements, and the way he tended to look away too quickly when caught had tipped off at least one student to the shift in atmosphere between them.

Keela Roberts was entirely too savvy for her own good, and with the number of poor excuses Eren made to avoid being caught alone with her, he supposed he might as well have just confirmed it outright.

***

As Levi was precisely the sort of person who did not believe in lingering on principle, it was all the more jarring when he started doing it.

Eren knew his hesitation- there was an inevitable tension to their accommodations, to going upstairs together and entering rooms on either side of a hall so narrow it was perfectly possible to bump elbows while unlocking their doors.

He’d had a tryst of sorts with another Hufflepuff, once, and he still remembered the hushed, heady feeling of sneaking down the staircase to meet him in the Common Room, away from the boys they shared their dormitory with. Something about it had felt secret and scandalous- they were hardly the only pair in Hufflepuff sneaking out of their beds at night, but the sense of daring had still been there, nonetheless.

He thought he saw that same sort of furtive thrill in Levi’s looks as he dithered pointlessly by his unlocked door.

It was a much more interesting thing to see in a grown man than it had been in a teenager.

He was beginning to have some rather curious suspicions about the depths of Levi’s experiences with things not relating to his work- or, rather, the shallows.

“Do you want to come in?” he asked, and Levi froze.

Knowing this behaviour was not the result of some profound discomfort made it was infinitely funnier than it had been the first time. He had to bite down lightly on the side of his tongue to stop himself from laughing.

“Come in?” Levi parroted. His voice was odd and flat in a way Eren recognized as being particular to his feeling unsure of how a question was meant and, in consequence, not knowing what tone to use in response.

He had a fleeting thought that it was interesting, then, in realizing how much more of Levi he had started to see when he stopped looking to him as just a hero.

He let himself grin. “I thought we could talk,” he reassured, almost laughing again as the tension went out of Levi’s face. “It’s still early.”

“Oh. Alright.”

He looked like he had some mixed feelings about the way the evening was proceeding.

Eren thought himself very mature for refraining from commenting on that.

***

The first thing Levi did upon entering his room was frown at the pile of unwashed clothing in the corner- beside the hamper but not in it; Eren’s aim was worse in the evenings- and at the twisted bedsheets and ambitiously migrated pillows, but he said nothing as he installed himself in the chair by the desk.

Eren did him the courtesy of smoothing out the bed before sitting down on it. He did not pick up his laundry.

“So,” Levi said with odd gravity.

“So,” Eren imitated, and then immediately snorted. Levi frowned at him. “I give, I’ll ask: why are you having so much trouble with this? What am I supposed to do here to help you out? ‘Cause honestly, I have no idea.”

Whatever Levi had been expecting him to say, it certainly wasn’t that. He looked utterly taken aback.

“What?” he asked first, and then, “I don’t know what you mean.”

Eren shifted into a more comfortable position. “Levi-”

“I did tell you I wasn’t good at this,” he muttered, slouching defensively and looking more and more like he regretted accepting the invitation to ‘come in and talk.’

“Look, if we were younger and you weren’t so… _you_ , I’d just go for it,” Eren told him, “but things being as they are, you’re not someone I think it’s smart to just go for things at, so I’m asking: I don’t know why you’re hesitating, so I don’t know what to do. You’re clearly interested, but you’re also still doing the _thing_.”

Levi’s eyebrows were furrowing. “The thing?”

“The thing where you wallow in indecision until the decision makes itself and then you regret it,” he supplied helpfully.

Levi looked a little pained by this assessment. “Ah.”

“Why?” Eren asked. “That’s all I want to know: why? I thought we got this sorted out.”

Levi did something jerky and awkward with his shoulder that Eren took a moment to recognize as a shrug. “You know how it is,” he said, affecting such complete and unconvincing indifference that his manner began to evolve into something comically robotic. “You screw up once, go on kicking your own ass over it for the rest of your life, and suddenly all you want to do is avoid screwing up again.” He grinned, suddenly, but it was almost a grimace. “All it takes is one regret.”

Eren, truthfully speaking, hadn’t even the foggiest glimmer of what he was talking about.

“I tend to screw up over and over again without even thinking about it,” he admitted freely. “On the same things, too.” Levi’s expression was doing something a little funny. “So, uh, yeah. Sorry, I have no idea how that is.”

“Ah,” Levi responded.

Eren squinted at him. “What did you _do?”_

From his reaction alone, a passerby would swear Eren had asked him where he’d hidden the bodies of his victims- a spasmodic ripple of guilty went through him, making his fingers jump, then clench, and pulling at the corner of his mouth like they’d hooked a finger into his cheek.

“It’s not-”

Eren held his palms out disarmingly. “Y’know what? It’s fine.”

“I-”

“No, really,” he insisted, almost laughing, “I don’t think I want to know.”

“Eren-”

Eren grinned at him, trying to ease the hunted look from his eyes by example. “If it bothers you that much, it’s not really my-”

“I stole a wand,” Levi blurted out, and then immediately lapsed into silence with a look of resignation and slight relief, like a criminal finally caught after years of desperate living.

Eren gaped at him.

“I stole a wand,” he repeated, more calmly. He drew his wand from an inside pocket of his coat and looked at it.

“That wand?” Eren asked incredulously. Levi nodded. “Well, who did you steal it from?”

Levi shot him a look. “I stole it from a wand shop.”

Something was nagging at him. It took him a moment to remember.

 “You _can’t_ steal a wand from a wand shop,” Eren exploded, “they-’

Levi grimaced at him, but he looked uneasy. “I’m telling you, I stole this wand from a wand shop-”

“No, you don’t understand,” Eren argued, actually so frustrated with the whole mess that he found himself standing up from the edge of the bed. “They have charms specifically to prevent people from stealing wands- you _can’t_ leave a wand shop with a wand you haven’t paid for!”

Levi was beginning to look downright murderous. “I think I know what I did, Eren. Saying I can’t have done it doesn’t undo the fact that I did it, does it?”

Eren jabbed a finger at him contentiously. “Maybe the wandmaker gave it to you, I don’t know-”

Incensed, Levi rose from his seat as well. Even through his anger, Eren took notice of the way he was gripping his wand. “People don’t just give away wands-”

“I was given mine!” Eren snapped.

Levi looked startled.

“What, for free?” he asked, eyebrows drawing together.

“Yes!” Eren seethed.

“A wandmaker _gave_ you a wand?” Levi asked again, looking increasingly bewildered. “For _free?”_

“Yes,” Eren repeated, drawing his own wand out. “He said it was something he made for a lady with an Abraxan-” He frowned and shook his head. “No- a Kelpie the size of an Abraxan,” he corrected. “She wanted a wand with one of its hairs as a core, I think? And he made this one,” he said, holding it up in demonstration. “But it wasn’t the right wand for her, and he kept it for years and years until I found it, I guess.”

Levi was looking at him rather like he’d sprouted a second head.

“Oh, and he said something about stealing wood from a neighbour’s tree to make it,” Eren added, starting to feel a touch awkward.

“He gave you that,” Levi said slowly, pointing at his wand, “for free?”

“…Yes,” Eren repeated again. “He wouldn’t let my father pay for it. He even threatened to charm it so it would always find its way back to me if Dad refused to let me take it.”

Levi was looking at him as though he’d sprouted a third head and it had begun singing arias.

“He said he thought he’d never find the right wizard for this wand?” Eren trailed off, feeling a little like he was saying something ridiculous without realizing it.

Levi just kept staring at him.

“So one of us _could_ pay for his wand, and got it for free,” he muttered vaguely, “and the other stole it because he couldn’t.”

“You can’t steal a wand from a wand shop,” Eren repeated automatically.

“I stole a wand from a wand shop,” Levi informed him, quite insistent.

“You _can’t_ steal a wand from a wand shop,” Eren argued.

Levi waved a hand dismissively. “This wasn’t even what we were talking about,” he muttered. “It’s just-“

Eren shifted restlessly from foot to foot, still half in thrall of his need to hear Levi admit he did not steal his wand. “Just what?”

Levi’s tongue darted across his lips. “I don’t really know how you want this to go,” he confessed. “And I don’t want to screw up.”

Eren actually laughed at that. “Oh, I’ll screw up  long before you do, don’t worry,” he reassured.

Levi looked a little startled. “Why do you say that?”

“My ex called me- what was it?” He hummed contemplatively. “Oh: ‘superficially charming, but about as emotionally accessible as a Dementor.’”

Levi laughed and then cringed. Eren waved away his apology. “No, it’s fine, go ahead and laugh. It bothered me for long enough that I have to be able to laugh at it.”

They lapsed into a companionable silence.

As they both settled back down onto the bed and chair, respectively, Eren leaned his chin in his palm and his elbow on his thigh and murmured, very quietly,

“You still can’t steal a wand from a wand shop.”

Levi did not look impressed with him.

***

Joseph Moreland prided himself an especially detailed knowledge of defensive magic, so when the Auror Levi and his assistant came to him with a question, he was initially overjoyed.

“Moreland,” Eren asked him seriously, “could a muggle steal a wand from a wand shop?”

“A muggle?” he parroted, bemused but eager. “Well, the likelihood of a muggle being able to find, let alone _enter_ , a wand shop is-”

Levi interrupted him with a dismissive motion and a curt,

“Forget the muggle. Could a wandless witch or wizard?”

“Well, that would depend on their ability to perform wandless magic, in which case-”

“No wandless magic,” Levi grunted at precisely the same moment his assistant started to look triumphant in a way that made Joseph- or Joey, as his mother called him- wonder nervously if the question was not related to their coursework, after all.

“Well,” he started, feeling a little exposed under the combined pressure of their stares. “Ordinarily, no, but,” he allowed, “anti-theft charms vary from wandmaker to wandmaker, as does whether the charm is placed on only displayed wands- to save the effort of breaking charms on wands that could not be got at by the public, anyway- or the whole of the stock, so I suppose if the wand in question was very new or had not otherwise… been charmed…”

There had been an intended ending to that sentence, but Joey forgot it completely in the face of the subtle but striking glimmer of combative victory in his teacher’s eye, not to mention the string of invectives Eren let loose in response.

***

Professor Hanji Zoë took a certain morbid pride in being the most whispered-about educator on the Hogwarts campus.

They knew, of course, about their reputation and the general opinion students and other staff had of them.

They were rather congenially mad in the eye of the public, and that suited them.

Generally speaking, it meant people left them well enough alone while they were conducting their research.

They were wrist-deep in a rather fascinating array of radio circuitry when they heard voices bickering in the stairwell outside of their preferred research chamber.

It quickly became apparent the voices were approaching rather than passing by. They removed the magnifying attachment from the bridge of their spectacles and peered inquisitively at the door until someone came through it.

“Look,” Levi was saying with a fervency they found curious. “Look: we’ll have this settled once and for all, so stop trying to argue with me-”

“I’m telling you, that was a completely unlikely scenario he gave out, you _can’t just steal a wand from a wand shop-”_

Hanji continued to look at them until, one after another, the two of them realized they were being watched.

“Hello,” Hanji greeted, eying them curiously.

“You,” Levi responded courteously, “could a wi- could a magic user without a wand-”

“Or the ability to use wandless magic,” Eren interjected helpfully.

“Or the ability to use wandless magic,” Levi amended, “steal a wand from a wand shop?” As Hanji deliberated, he grew visibly more restless. “Under any circumstances. Is it possible?”

“Yes,” they started, scrutinizing the strange almost-smile that emerged on his face before continuing with, “but they wouldn’t be able to do anything useful with it.”

Levi’s almost-smile fell. “What do you mean?”

Hanji adjusted their glasses and began reattaching their magnifier. “All stolen wands, if reported, are entered into the Ministry’s record of wand theft. You wouldn’t be able to go to school- these days, every student’s wand is registered upon admittance. You wouldn’t be able to get a job, either, for the same reasons. And even if you wanted it for something illegal, you couldn’t use it for too long before someone started associating it with you and using its signature to follow. We can do those things these days, you know,” they murmured, half their mind back on the task at hand. “The future of magic is already here.”

“You’re joking.”

They heard, rather than saw, the dismay Levi was feeling. They hummed sympathetically.

“So what if they tried to become an Auror?” Eren asked after a moment, sounding well and truly intrigued.

Hanji paused to peer at him over their magnifier. They faintly registered Levi looking monstrously uncomfortable beside him.

“Showing up to the Auror’s test with a stolen wand? Well, it’d be as good as turning yourself in, I suppose,” they mused. “Personally, I think that’d make a very stylish confession.”

They turned back to their work, satisfied their role was done, and in the quiet that followed, Eren murmured,

“Told you: you can’t steal a wand from a wand shop,”

and Levi called him something very rude indeed.


End file.
